Communicate, collaborate, and work better by taking a few minutes to determine your work style. Recognizing your work style and the style of those around you will enable you to lead your team to success without the guesswork.
A recent Zippia survey shows that 86% of team leaders agree that most workplace failure is caused by a lack of collaboration. The same study also shows that employee turnover rates are lowered by 50% when collaboration and communication are prevalent.
One of the best ways to improve communication and collaboration is to determine your personal work style and recognize the style of your employees and coworkers.
There are many different ways to learn about your work style. You can take a work style assessment, talk to your manager or colleagues, study your personality traits, or observe how you work best. Once you know your style, you can change your work environment and routine to support your productivity.
What Is a Work Style?
A work style is the way your personality and work combine. It determines how you will take on projects and interact with others throughout the workday.
What you’re naturally good at, what you enjoy, and what’s a challenge will determine your results.
Why Is It Important to Know Your Work Style?
Knowing your work style can help you in many ways, such as:
- Being more productive. When you know how you work best, you can create a work environment and routine that supports your productivity.
- Working more effectively with others. When you understand your work style and the styles of others, you can communicate and collaborate more effectively.
- Managing your time better. Knowing how you work best can help you to set realistic goals and deadlines and to avoid procrastination.
- Reducing stress. When you know how to work in a way that aligns with your natural preferences, you can reduce stress and burnout.
- Achieving your goals. When you know your work style, you can create a plan to achieve your goals that is more likely to be successful.
Not only is it essential to know your work style, but it’s also advantageous to recognize the style of those around you. As a leader, knowing your employees’ work styles will help you to understand how to approach people, which projects are best for which people, and who would work together well in a team.
4 Main Work Styles
Logical
Those with a logical work style develop unique ideas and approaches to projects and solutions. They are known as doers and work best with minimal interruptions and supervision. Logical workers are innovative but can become narrow-minded as they get to work, forgetting to fill in the rest of the team members on their ideas/progress.
Strengths: Focus, speed, determination, problem solving
Weaknesses: Communication, planning
Supportive
Those with supportive work styles are the empaths of the workplace. They have great self-awareness and are the first to notice when someone is having a bad day or struggling. Supportive employees are great at boosting morale and motivating their coworkers. They do their best work in a team.
Strengths: Collaboration, empathy, communication, teamwork
Weaknesses: Focus, independent decision-making
Detail-oriented
People with detail-oriented work styles rarely make mistakes. They are known as learners and meticulously read each document to fix every spelling, grammar, or logistical error. They think through each detail and possible issue before beginning a project. Because of that, they may struggle to complete tasks quickly and benefit from being paired with logical, patient personality types.
Strengths: Strategy, organization, pragmatism
Weaknesses: Speed, sticking to timelines, getting caught up in the details
Idea-oriented
A person with an idea-oriented work style is usually a risk-taker. They spend a lot of time brainstorming grand visions and think outside the box. They speak so enthusiastically that their coworkers will likely jump on board with their ideas. However, because they are big-picture thinkers, they often forget to focus on the details, planning, and structure of their concepts.
Strengths: Inspiring, visionary, energetic
Weaknesses: Communication, follow-through, structure
Generally, the four types of work styles listed above are the main categories. However, some also recognize ‘cooperative’ and ‘proximity’ as separate working styles.
- Those with a cooperative work style love collaboration, communication, and feedback. They enjoy discussing ideas with a group and may feel less motivated when working independently.
- A proximity work style describes those that are very balanced and adaptive. They work well in a team or independently and are generally good at giving and receiving feedback.
How to Discover Your Personal Work Style
- Take an assessment. Personality tests (such as Myers-Briggs) will help you realize your traits, such as dominant or submissive, extroverted or introverted, etc. You can compare these results with the characteristics of each work style and decide which fits you best.
Alternatively, you can take an online work style test. Here’s one that’s short but free. And here’s another that is much more detailed, but you must pay for the full results. - Note what makes you happy and unhappy. Do you feel more joy when working in a team or when you can concentrate in private? What productive tasks do you dread or enjoy?
If you enjoy organizing and editing, your work style is likely detail-oriented. If you prefer finding unique solutions to problems, you may be idea-oriented or logical. - Notice what type of coworker you are. Do you take charge, plan, organize, lift morale, or often find yourself mediating? Supportive might be your work style if you frequently check in with coworkers or help them solve problems.
- Ask your manager or coworkers for their opinion. You may not even notice your strengths because they naturally come to you. Ask others what they think of your work ethic, what you excel at, and what you could work on.
For an even more detailed answer, ask them a hypothetical question: “If you were starting a new company and could only bring five people, would I be included?”. - Review your previous feedback in employee evaluations. Evaluations are typically detailed and a great way to recognize how you portray yourself at work.
If you haven’t had a recent assessment, evaluate yourself at the end of each day for a month. Write down which part of the day was easiest and most challenging, which tasks you enjoyed and disliked, and remember to include how you interacted with coworkers–did they come to you, or did you seek them out? - Consider how you handle conflict. Do you avoid it, welcome it and compete to win, or do you immediately seek a compromise? Logical workers don’t tend to be crowd-pleasers and are confident in their ideas. Those with supportive work styles value harmony and work to find an immediate solution.
Don’t let the label of a work style hold you back. Most people connect with one dominant style but see parts of themselves across the board. Just because you fall into one category now doesn’t mean that you can’t learn or evolve into a different style in the future. Let these labels empower you to focus on your strengths.
If you find equal pieces of yourself in each category, congratulations, you’re very well-rounded. Continue improving yourself by creating a list of your positive attributes and the areas that could use improvement.
